Diplomacy
Aliyev Visits Georgia as Armenia-Azerbaijan Trade Bypasses Russia at Record Pace
April 9, 2026
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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev visited Georgia on April 6, 2026, for meetings with President Mikheil Kavelashvili and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze — a visit unannounced officially but signalled by Azerbaijani flags appearing across central Tbilisi ahead of his arrival. The Georgian Foreign Ministry described relations between Baku and Tbilisi as "close to allied," particularly on infrastructure and transport, and the visit underscores how Georgia's role as the physical bridge between Armenia and Azerbaijan is becoming one of the most consequential economic facts in the post-peace South Caucasus.
The visit came as a detailed picture emerged of just how rapidly Armenia and Azerbaijan are building trade ties through Georgian territory — and of how deliberately both governments are using that trade to reduce Moscow's economic grip on the region. According to RFE/RL, Azerbaijan has already shipped its first trains of gasoline to Armenia, with Prime Minister Pashinyan confirming in January that the minimum price of premium gasoline in Armenia fell 15% after Azerbaijani fuel entered the market. Russia previously supplied roughly two-thirds of Armenia's fuel imports. That market share is now being actively contested.
The trade flow through Georgian rail infrastructure is expanding rapidly beyond energy products. Azerbaijan has also been serving as a transit route for wheat from Kazakhstan and Russia, delivering grain to Armenian buyers who previously had fewer routing options. Armenian officials are simultaneously finalising a list of industrial and agricultural products for export to Azerbaijan — a process that, once complete, would create a two-way commercial relationship between countries that were at war less than six years ago.
Richard Giragosian, founding director of the Regional Studies Center in Yerevan, told RFE/RL that direct trade across the Azerbaijan-Armenia border — not just via Georgian transit — is a genuine near-term possibility. "What we see with the recent arrival of Azerbaijani civil society activists through a border crossing point in the northern Tavush region, we should expect the opening of road access," Giragosian said. For that to happen, the ongoing border delimitation process must be completed — approximately 12 kilometres of the 1,000-kilometre-plus border have been formally delimited so far, with the process running from north to south starting at the Azerbaijan-Armenia-Georgia trilateral border point.
Joshua Kucera, a senior South Caucasus analyst at the International Crisis Group, offered important analytical context: the primary driver of Armenian-Azerbaijani trade normalisation is the peace process itself, not anti-Russia strategy. "I agree that Armenia and Azerbaijan are acting in a way that reduces Moscow's influence in the Caucasus, though I don't know to what extent the Russia factor is driving their calculations," Kucera told RFE/RL. "I suspect it is a secondary consideration: Their first priority is to resolve their conflict." The result, however, is the same — Moscow is losing structural leverage in a region where it has been the dominant external actor for three decades.
Aliyev's Tbilisi visit reinforces the trilateral Georgia-Armenia-Azerbaijan economic architecture that is emerging around the TRIPP corridor, the transit fuel shipments, and the broader Middle Corridor logistics push. Georgia benefits as the indispensable transit state: every tonne of Azerbaijani fuel shipped to Armenia, every wagon of Kazakh grain, every future container moving between the Caspian and Europe via the TRIPP route passes through Georgian territory. The Georgian Foreign Ministry's framing of Baku as a "key and alternative partner" reflects Tbilisi's own interest in anchoring its geopolitical positioning in functional infrastructure relationships rather than purely in the contested EU integration debate.
The broader regional trajectory, if this pace of normalisation continues, points toward a South Caucasus in which trade flows, energy interconnections, and transport corridors have replaced conflict as the defining logic of inter-state relations — and in which Russia's long-standing role as the indispensable mediator and energy supplier has been systematically diminished by the countries themselves.
